Parents’ Preparation for Bias and Responses to Black Children’s Distress Predicts Self-Regulation: An Attachment Perspective

• In Event: Attachment Theory and Black Youth Development: New Directions for Cross-disciplinary Dialogue

Abstract

To provide a secure base, caregivers must protect children from harm by recognizing and responding to child distress and potential threats (Cassidy, 2008). This repeated attending to, and co-regulation of child distress creates a representation for the child that the caregiver is reliable. Thus, children feel safe to explore, knowing they will be protected and can return for comfort when needed. However, Black children face unique obstacles in navigating a world that is not always safe for them. Their normative behaviors, and sometimes mere presence are often perceived with racial bias and can have severe consequences (Halberstadt et al., 2018). Accordingly, research demonstrates that Black parents discuss with children the potential for bias and sometimes respond punitively to children’s emotional distress out of fear that children’s negative emotions could make them targets for racism (Dunbar et al., 2017). Simultaneously, children’s discriminatory experiences are painful, in addition to normative distress, and responding to distress in supportive ways is imperative to secure-base provision (Woodhouse et al., 2019). Consequently, Black parents face a conundrum in which the very caregiving behaviors yielded to protect children (i.e., punitive responses) could be detrimental to children’s secure attachment, and in turn, sense of safety, security, and ability to self-regulate.
We propose that parental efforts to protect Black children via preparation for bias (PFB) messages and some suppression of emotions can be adaptive if parents provide a secure base by frequently responding supportively to children’s distress.
Methods: 91 mothers of Black children reported on their PFB messages via the Parents’ Messages about Race Scale (Hughes & Chen, 1997), their likelihood of responding in suppressive and supportive ways to children’s emotional distress via the CCNES, children’s externalizing problems via the CBCL (Achenbach, 1991), and children’s emotional reactivity via the ERC (Shields & Cicchetti, 1998). Children’s emotion regulation was observed via lab frustration tasks (Zeytinoglu et al., 2019). Measures were collected when children were in kindergarten and 1st grade, a critical period in which children enter a more public world.
Results: Outcome measures were predicted similarly in preliminary analyses and were thus standardized to create a composite self-regulation score. In this sample, the range of mothers’ suppression responses to children’s distress was low to moderate, whereas the range of supportive responses was moderate to high. There was a main effect of PFB such that mothers’ PFB messages in kindergarten predicted greater 1st grade self-regulation, b= .11, p< .05. Further, there was an interaction between PFB and suppression responses that was conditional upon level of supportive responses (i.e. a significant 3-way interaction). As seen in Figure 1, when supportive responses to distress was moderate, level of suppression did not significantly moderate the link between PFB and self-regulation. However, PFB combined with moderate suppression and high supportive responses to distress predicted children’s greater self-regulation, while PFB combined with low suppression and high supportive responses predicted children’s lower self-regulation.
Implications: In thinking about attachment and secure base provision from an anti-racist perspective, researchers must consider the complex realities experienced by Black families.

Authors

• Angel Sia Dunbar, University of Maryland - College Park
  Presenting Author

• Esther M. Leerkes, UNC Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author

• Fantasy T. Lozada, Virginia Commonwealth University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lydia Harim Ahn, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author